It was around this time that the second group of visitors for the IAC began to arrive. These were the upper-middle class to lower-upper class of society, who were able to purchase the IAC Platinum Preorder packages. Some of them were also washed-up celebrities wracked by scandal or athletes who succumbed to the temptation of performance enhancing drugs and stigmatized by the media when found out who had come to Animalia to start life anew. Many of these latter cases often discarded their old lives and started over with new lives and new names.
It was at this time that preparation/training for the Games shifted into high gear, but it also lead to a number of new commercials, among other things.
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The large numbers of intoxicated humans getting caught lead to several new commercial/warning about driving intoxicated. It involved Animalian officers, not just the dogs and wolves, disguised by optical camouflage keeping an eye on intoxicated humans, and appearing as if from nowhere when humans started driving cars while still intoxicated.
One such commercial had Miss Vivian's mate, Arthur, pulling one intoxicated pair of drivers over, and responding to attempts to cover up/downplay their intoxication with: "I've got heat sensors in my nose and extremely acute hearing. I can tell when you're lying." This was followed by the caption, "Even in Animalia, Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over."
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Animalia Ambassadoria, having returned from Brazil with the new "recruits" for Horizon Labs, immediately got back to training for the Games. Abby and Durga getting back into training for the Triathlon. After a few practice "wins" by Durga and Abby cleaning off the "rust" from her Triathlon training, it came to be close between the two of them more often than not.
There were other things going on, some caught by media, others not. But the internet reactions to some of them made many Animalians smile upon reading them. The Media Iron Law, as it came to be called, was that Clara, even though she was now confined to the hospital to await the birth of her quads, would retain ultimate veto power over what would appear on the news. Robbie would pass on the video clips that the media submitted to him, and relayed back what Clara was thinking.
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One such news crew made it to one of the training rooms in Golden Mountain Dojo to do an interview with Tom about having his ALS cured, and found him in a room with 12 fabricated zombie dummies suspended on zip lines. Brittany, thankfully, notified Tom about the news group before they could make fools of themselves. After a brief interview, Tom was able to explain what was going on:
"One year after I was diagnosed with ALS, I saw the Deadliest Warrior episode: Vampires Vs. Zombies. I would have taken the episode with me to my grave before the Animalia Virus became a miracle drug, of sorts. But ever since I was cured, I wanted to try that very first test."
"Which was?" Asked one of the reporters, having not seen that one.
"To get a fair ratio of zombies to one vampire." Answered Tom, "Because A: if it was just one vampire and one zombie, the vampire will always win; and B: Zombies never attack one on one, they attack in packs." Then Tom indicated the twelve dummies on zip lines. "These twelve dummies actually represent a 72 zombie pack. I'm going to destroy as many as possible before the remaining dummies reach the center, meaning that the remaining zombies have encircled and overwhelmed me."
It was one of the most interesting thing the media had ever seen. Tom managed to destroy ten zombie dummies before the remaining two managed to encircle him. Using the calculations, Tom had succeeded in destroying sixty zombies before the remaining twelve finished him. This would generate a comment on the Animalia website that Animalians would have a better chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse.
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Animalia School of Modeling was getting both a lot of job offers and a lot of applicants. It would seem that many national brands, of not merely food or clothing, wanted Animalians as part of their advertising. There were a lot of negotiations to get those contracts started, but there were two things that were non negotiable: there was absolutely no portrayals of Animalians in a negative fashion, and the contract would be terminated by the signee if he or she was uncomfortable with anything.
One surprising thing was that some models were less willing to do more provocative shots than others. In fact, everyone at Animalia School of Modeling had different preferences. It was really a learning curve to find out who would do what.
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Overseas, on Mieni Atoll, the events that would be officially part of the IAC included swimming (artistic or otherwise), a jungle obstacle course/race, beach sports (not just beach volleyball) and a bodybuilding competition of it's own. Fortunately for them, Anton and Marlysa had made several "posing training" videos as a side project after they became part of Animalia, and sent them to Mieni Atoll to help with their training. It helped that both Anton and Marlysa helped explain what the pose was supposed to emphasize, and how to do it easily.
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Horizon Labs came up with a really creative way to display Iphis and Ianthe's hermaphroditism without violating their privacy. They used an MRI to get a few scans of their pelvic region, used colors and labels to indicate which was which part of their anatomy and where it was, and printed it out on paper. What also was included on the display featuring them was a story on "We" and how "We's" DNA was used to enable them to survive.
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There were many instances of public intoxication and embarrassment around this time also. Many of them were minor and involved humans getting drunk and trying to attract a bondmate afterwards. Many of them were rather hilarious, especially when they were caught on camera, recorded, and played back with silly sound effects, silly censorship, color commentary, and other things that made people laugh. One such thing was a girl just turning 21, trying alcohol for the first time, getting somewhat sloshed, trying to flirt with a horse Animalian, and trying to lean seductively into him and falling off her barstool with the effort.
While alcohol was a large feature of these "Stupid Cupid" clips, others included bad flirting, lame one-liners, and silly stunts that ended in failure. After more than twenty such clips were caught on film, Clara decided to put them together for a DVD sold at the Claw Coliseum's Gift Shop titled "All's Fair in Love and War in Animalia."
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When all was said and done, The halfway marker for the coming of the IAC was helping Animalia to understand the differences between the upper, middle, and lower classes of human society.